The Adventures of Alicia Parker is my latest illustrated children’s book. It’s edited,published by Austin Macauley Publishers and recently released on 30 January 2026.

It dawned upon me to write yet another book for children when I met the best selling author of The Ark of Noah , Irving Finkel in person ,at the British Library in 2019.The unexpected event happened against the backdrop of the Zee Jaipur Literary Festival.

We talked about books. Finally, he left me with these memorable words of wisdom and inspiration-

Writing is one of the miraculous achievements of the world.The best thing that you can do is to write children’s books.

I had already written and published three books for children. I toyed with the idea of writing a fourth one halfheartedly. I was aware of the complexity of the market and the competition in the field of books for children. Thousands of books for kids were written,published and released every day of the year.

It was a risky choice.

Stories about pet animals, fairies and extraterrestrial beings were too common, my new story should be unique and exclusive, I concluded.

I put my pen on paper and started to write the story of a tomboy who was no one else but me! Adventurous, fearless, daring…

All children are endowed with some kind of special gift, imagination, intuition, foresight or premonition. They rarely talk about it or they are not allowed to speak about it. The least they can do is to read about it.

Even more, children who read early tend to achieve higher academic proficiency and better comprehension later in school.Simultaneously exposure to words from birth builds neural pathways, expands vocabulary, and improves comprehension skills.

The only way to get children to read books,specially in my native country, Mauritius, is to add some salt and pepper to my tales.

Happy Reading, Everyone!

The Adventures of Alicia Parker is available for purchase in #paperback #audio and #kindle

From #Austin Macauley #Amazon and #BarnesandNoble

Anita Bacha